Sunday, October 27, 1782. Mist and intermittent sheets of cold rain shrouded the granite spine of Butter Hill as it stretched west from the Hudson River above West Point toward the distant Shawangunk mountain range. Farmers, working neat, stonewalled fields, watched the storm without noticing anything unusual along the mountain's crest. At dusk, however, the rain eased and the mist lifted to reveal something new and strange. High on the mountain hundreds of small lights flickered like fireflies. Highlanders were puzzled, then exclaimed, “They're campfires. It's the army. Back for the winter.”
They were right. Washington's northern wing of the Continental Army had marched from its summer camp near Peekskill, New York, to Constitution Island, ferried across the Hudson, then climbed the steep mountain. This night would be the last the army would spend on an open, rain-soaked field. In the morning it would march to nearby New Windsor to build its final winter camp.
The campsite, about four miles southwest of Washington's Newburgh headquarters, was well chosen. Butter Hill (now called Storm King Mountain) protected it from sudden attack, yet it lay within a forced march of West Point, with its crucial command of the Hudson. It also lay near main roads from New England and mid-Atlantic supply bases.
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